Facebook sues data analytics firm OneAudience over malicious SDK
Facebook is suing the data analytics firm OneAudience for allegedly developing a malicious, social-media-profile-grabbing software development kit (SDK) and then paying app developers to embed it in their apps.
In a complaint filed in California on Thursday, Facebook charged that the polluted apps – which included shopping, gaming and utility-type apps – were inflicted onto mobile devices through various app stores, including Google Play. Once users installed the apps, the malicious SDK would slurp up information from their devices and from victims’ Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts, if users logged into the app using those accounts.
According to the complaint, OneAudience’s malicious SDK swiped the data that Facebook users had agreed to share with the app – data that may have included their name, email address, the country where they logged in from, time zone, Facebook ID, and, sometimes, gender. The SDK funneled the data back to the New Jersey data analytics outfit, Facebook said, all without the company’s permission, and in violation of Federal and California law, its policies, and its terms of service – including those pertaining to use of its Facebook Login feature.
